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Morning commutes, STEM education dual focuses of new census release

National Household Survey data to unpack labour and education trends

Dr. Michael Rudnick, a senior scientist and director of the regenerative medicine program at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, is part of the team of scientists who have found a way — at least in mice — to trigger the body to produce more calorie-burning brown fat, a feat that may open the door to new treatments for obesity using good fat to fight bad fat.Photo: FIle photo

The largest-scale public analysis ever undertaken of science, technology, engineering and mathematics/computer science specialization in Canada will be released Wednesday, with Statistics Canada providing first-time data on the number of people with degrees in “STEM” fields nationwide, as well as the share of women and immigrants in that group.

The findings, which are based on National Household Survey responses from 2.65 million Canadians in 2011, will be unveiled as part of a broader examination of labour and education trends.

“Frankly, the labour market literature for STEM fields in Canada has been very, very thin,” said Michael Hawes,CEO of Fulbright Canada, the foundation behind a number of prestigious science and technology awards.

“We need this data for making decisions about immigration policy; we need the data for planning future educational changes or innovations or program renewals; and we need the data to get a sense of how, and under what circumstances, we’re competing in an increasingly globalized economy.”

“The question is, do we provide the necessary opportunities and training for new Canadians to segue from, say, the tech environment in India to a tech environment here?” said Hawes. “We’re going to hear, I suspect, lots of anecdotal evidence about high-tech folks from pick-a-place driving cabs. How do you get them from the cab to the lab?”

Traffic congestion on Burrard st North of Nelson during the afternoon rush hour in Vancouver, July 10 2012.

Equally anticipated in the report is StatsCan’s look at morning commutes, which will include unprecedented data on the time Canadians leave for work and whether or not they carpool, in addition to other factors.

Researchers say the findings will provide a critical snapshot of how commuters are coping with traffic, the extent to which alternate transportation methods are being used, and the relationship between metropolitan growth and drive time.

“We can actually get at the issue of drive-alone versus passenger versus public transit or walking – something we can’t do right now with the current 2006 census data,” said Darren Scott, a professor and transportation researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton.

“It will (also) be interesting to see who is an ‘extreme commuter’ (90-plus minutes) and what factors drive this behaviour. Is it simply housing costs? I think it’s more than that, but we haven’t had data to investigate this problem at the necessary scale before.”

Ajay Agarwal, who studies the role of public transit investments in urban environments, will approach the NHS data as a kind of national report card.

“I want to see how the system is doing overall,” said Agarwal, an assistant professor at Queen’s University in Kingston. “People make their travel decisions based on how they perceive conditions, either travelling before or after the busy period, choosing a different mode of transportation, or taking a different route.”

Factors Agarwal will be watching for include travel trends by geography – for instance, Toronto versus Edmonton, and how the results correlate with public transit initiatives; the travel characteristics of urban versus rural households; and the use of public transit by new Canadians versus established immigrants.

The June 26 release, to be extensively covered by Postmedia, will also include breakdowns of the top 20 jobs among men and women; the most popular occupations for workers aged 55 and older; the demographic and geographic distribution of educational achievement (that is, who’s racking up the most degrees, and where do they live?); and the labour, education and transportation patterns of Aboriginal Peoples.

Misty Harris is a nationally recognized journalist known for her stories on social science, consumer trends, demographics, academic studies, and marketing. For more than a decade, her articles have been... read more featured on the front pages of Canada’s top newspapers, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist, Montreal Gazette, The Province, The Leader-Post, The Star-Phoenix, The Windsor Star, and Ottawa Citizen, in addition to such online news hubs as Canada.com.
Harris has been honoured by the Society for Features Journalism; appeared as a pop culture commentator on CTV, Global News and BBC World Service; reported on fashion, health and lifestyle issues for Flare magazine; and spoken as a guest lecturer at universities in Canada and the U.S.
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